Africa

07/31/2013

There are about 250 prisoners in Pakistan who are no longer in prison today, thanks to a brazen jailbreak before midnight Monday. Reports say up to 150 heavily-armed Taliban fighters shot their way into a Dera Ismail Khan prison, in Pakistan's northwest. The Associated Press reported that militants used megaphones to call out the names of the specific prisoners.

On Saturday, near the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, more than 1,000 inmates were freed following attacks on the Koyfiya prison.

More than 500 militants - now sought by Interpol at a "major threat" to global security - escaped in Iraq last week after an attack by the local Al Qaeda group (AQI). It was reportedly a sophisticated operation with teams of suicide and car bombers, hitting the Taji prison first before attacking the notorious Abu Ghraib where most of the captured AQI members were held.

Worrying, of course, for the three countries and surrounding regions, as militants are likely to spill over into conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Al Qaeda's members in Iraq and Syria already merged in April into what they are calling "The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant." Iraq's Al Qaeda leader warned a year ago that they would free inmates.

Prison breaks in the past have been significant for Al Qaeda, most notably in Yemen, where Al Qaeda was relatively subdued, until February 2006, where 23 militants managed a spectacular escape (with potential inside help). Two of the freed men, Qasim al-Raimi and Nasser al-Wahishi, who had fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, went on to build Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). AQAP is regarded today by the U.S. administration as the number one threat to domestic safety.

But aside from fears of where the released militants may end up if not recaptured, the jailbreaks are worrying for what they signify. As the New York Time's Declan Walsh noted, the attack in Pakistan happened on the same day as lawmakers elected the country's 12th president - a stark reminder of the country's inability to fight militant violence, or as Walsh writes, shows "the troubling gap between politics and governance"

Former Pentagon intelligence analyst Joshua Foust, wrote Monday that prison breaks in Iraq are "deeply worrying for Iraq's long-term political prospects," and point to "an institutional hollowness."

Similar concerns in Libya, which has struggled in the aftermath of revolutions that swept the region in 2011 and 2012.

There may be no connection between the three, but there is little doubt this is a win for Al Qaeda, both in logistical terms and for the credibility boost of an amorphous group that has all too often been declared dead by counterterrorism analysts.

Beginning in the late 1990s and for much of the following
decade, the southern African republic’s economy declined at a rapid rate.
“Collapsed” would not be too strong a term.

To cope with a nearly constant series of financial crises,
the country’s central bank got in the habit of printing money faster and faster
and in ever larger denominations, money whose value kept shrinking as public
confidence in the currency eroded or – what was that word again? Collapsed.

By July 2008, the annual inflation rate had reached a truly
dizzying level, estimated at 231 million per cent. Prices for consumer goods
changed hourly and doubled almost daily.

But the central bank kept churning out Zimbabwe
dollars, emblazoned with ever greater quantities of zeroes. In January 2009,
the bank released a 100 trillion-dollar note that was briefly worth about $30 U.S. before it,
too, became worthless.

In the end, Finance Minister Tendai Biti – an opposition
figure in a patched-together coalition government – took what must have been a
deeply painful decision. After all, a country’s currency is about as potent a
national symbol as exists, even if its value is sinking through the
floor.

But Biti did what he felt he had to do. He withdrew Zimbabwe’s own
currency from circulation and replaced it with legal tender of a different
colour.

You might be familiar with it. It’s called the U.S. dollar.

Now, five years later, almost all financial transactions in Zimbabwe are
conducted in American greenbacks, and inflation has practically disappeared. By
2011, the annual inflation rate had fallen to just 3 per cent, and it continues
to hover around that level.

This abrupt monetary transformation – from chaos to
stability in one simple step – is known to economists as “dollarization.”

Simply put, it’s the replacement of a discredited national
currency with banknotes that bear the markings of a foreign land, preferably
one that has a better grip on its money supply.

Zimbabwe
is by no means the first country to have gone down this road.

It was more than a century ago, in 1904, that the Central
American republic of Panama opted to use U.S. dollars as its currency – or just
a year after the country conveniently gained political independence from
Colombia, so that the United States could dig a certain canal there. Panama also
has a “national” tender of its own – the Balboa – but in practice there is no
difference between the two currencies. They trade at par.

Nowadays, at least two other Latin American states, Ecuador and El Salvador, also do business in yanquí dollars.

Meanwhile, a welter of Pacific states have also opted to use
greenbacks. They include Palau,
Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and East
Timor, among others.

At least three other Pacific island-nations – Kiribati, Nauru,
and Tuvalu
– have followed a similar course but with a different geopolitical slant. They
also do business in dollars from a foreign land, but in these cases the dollars
are Australian, not American.

Other groups of countries – most notably members of the
European Union – have opted to replace their old national monetary units with a
common currency, in this case the Euro. Several Caribbean
islands also use a shared currency, as do more than a dozen countries in
central and west Africa, mostly former French colonies.

In most cases, dollarization seems to work pretty well,
although it is no panacea for all of a nation’s ills.

Zimbabwe
– where presidential and parliamentary elections are being conducted on July 31
– may have slain the dragon of monetary inflation by opting for the U.S. dollar.
But many serious political and economic challenges remain, not to mention one
or two tricky logistical problems.

For example, U.S. banknotes circulating in Zimbabwe tend
to remain in circulation a long time, becoming both very dirty and extremely
limp. Worse, there is no easy way to make small change, a difficulty chronicled
not long ago in a New YorkTimes report from Harare. Instead of making change with coins –
in Zimbabwe,
there are no coins – cashiers in supermarkets tend to divvy out candies or
matches or single tablets of Aspirin as a rough means of rounding off each
transaction.

It isn’t perfect, but it sure beats an annual inflation rate
of 231 million per cent.

“Mild-mannered Canada” is turning into a Superman of lobbying when it comes to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline -- and Americans are taking notice.

Canada is “making itself seen and heard inside the Beltway,” says the influential National Journal, an online and print publication aimed at Washington insiders that is widely read by members of Congress, White House staffers and Beltway lobbyists.

The Journal’s energy and environment correspondent, Amy Harder, notes that Ottawa has placed advertisements in the Washington subway and the Ronald Reagan National Airport and “plans to step up the campaign in September for what is expected to be the long-awaited homestretch fight over the project.”

Harder reports that as a country Canada has “an inherent advantage” over other lobbying groups since Canadian government officials meet regularly with administration officials and Congress.

At the G-8 summit in June “Harper pulled President Obama aside to talk Keystone,” the Journal reports, remarking as well that Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s “aggressive support” for the pipeline has prompted jokes that he is “the worst-paid lobbyist in the oil patch.”

“The fact that any foreign government—and especially mild-mannered Canada—is lobbying so publicly and assertively on one project is unusual,” the Journal argues, but it reflects “how much political capital Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is putting into this issue.”

“The lobbying is more intense than ever,” the CJR reported, noting that in Washington 48 groups lobbied in Washington on the issue in the first three months of the year, all but two of them apparently in favour of the pipeline.

“TransCanada, the Calgary-based company that seeks to build the pipeline, has played a major role in defining the debate, and continues to do so,” the CJR reports.

In the key state of Nebraska, CJR says TransCanada hired a lobbying firm “to quietly wine and dine members of the state’s … legislature.”

But the CJR warns the pipeline is facing opposition from an unusual alliance of environmentalists and conservatives.

“I’m a capitalist, conservative—really more of a libertarian—not an environmentalist,” Greg Awtry told the CJR. He’s the publisher of Nebraska’s York News-Times and a strong opponent to the pipeline. “It’s just strange bedfellows.”

Lobbying in the court of public opinion and in the corridors of political corridor is likely to intensify in the coming months before the Americans make a final decision of the fate of Keystone.

Still, the dispute over jobs is widely seen as a sideshow compared to the main battle over the environment, with Obama vowing he would approve the plan only if does not pose a "net" increase in greenhouse-gas emissions.

"It's going to take more than a PR campaign to win Obama over on the pipeline," the National Journal concludes, noting that the controversial project has “become a lightning rod in the debate over climate change.”

_________

Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter for the Star
and can be reached at jsher@thestar.ca and on
Twitter @juliansher.

07/26/2013

Judith Tebbutt, was held hostage in Adabo, Somalia for six months. AP Photo

Listen to this incredible tale of how one woman’s mental strength helped her survive being kidnapped and held hostage by Somali pirates who murdered her husband.

Judith Tebbutt, 58, an Englishwoman went on a safari holiday to Kenya with her husband David in September 2011. After a week in a game reserve the couple headed for the Kiwayu Beach Resort, which is on a small island only 40 kilometres from Somalia’s lawless coastline.

The night they arrived, six Somali gunmen broke into their room. She was dragged down the beach, into a boat and out to sea. David was shot in the head and died.

It was her skills as a mental health social worker that held her in good stead for six months as she was kept captive in a dark room and fed potatoes and rice.

Speaking to the BBC World Service she said: “Even though I despised these people, I knew that if I was going to be in their company for any length of time, I needed to try and build a rapport with them, build a connection.”

So she smiled at her captors and learned a few Somali phrases. She kept in shape by doing Pilates. Her efforts made a difference – Tebbutt was given a radio.

Sadly, she found out about her husband's death from her son when her captors allowed her a short phone call home.

“All the pirates were in the room. I looked at every one of them and said 'You killed my husband!' and 'You killed my husband,' she told the BBC. "One by one, they just filtered out. I was left with the leader man, and I said 'It was you. You killed my husband!' and it was like this face off. I thought 'I'm just going to look at you until you turn your face away.' I just felt such hatred."

She soldiered on, determined to survive. Part of that was keeping her identity and that meant refusing to wear the full length veil worn by most Somali women when the pirates ordered her to do so.

“That's really important, not to lose your own identity. However cruel they are to you, however they degrade you, you must remind yourself of who you are, all the time. I was still Jude, and I wanted to come out as Jude. I wanted to find a life for Jude again."

She even had the presence of mind to collect evidence about her kidnappers by writing in a notebook their descriptions.

Tebbutt was released in March 2012 and has written a book entitled Six Months in Captivity, which she says, was done to help other hostage victims.

“I just really want to tell people 'Do not give up hope, you haven't been forgotten', she told the British broadcaster. “You may think that you're languishing but there'll be someone somewhere trying to work towards your release."

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

07/22/2013

Fatima, 7, sits on a bed in her home in Karenssa
Village, in Amibara District, Afar Region. She was subjected to FGM/C
when she was 1 year old. UNICEF/NYHQ2009-2260/Kate Holt

One hundred and twenty-five million. It's a big number -- six zeroes in 125,000,000. As a population figure, it adds up to more people than there are in Mexico and almost as many as are living in Japan.

According to a new report from UNICEF, 125 million also represents the number of girls and women alive today who have undergone female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C). And 30 million is the number of girls still at risk of being subjected to FGM/C, an age-old practice that is -- even in its mildest form -- the anatomical equivalent of a penis amputation.

These are daunting numbers. But according to UNICEF's latest report, the practice is now steadily declining in more than half of the 29 countries where FGM/C persists. And in most countries where it is still being practiced, the majority of girls and women want to see FGM/C eliminated.

"The traditional practice of female genital mutilation/cutting has proven remarkably persistent, despite nearly a century of attempts to eliminate it," reads the executive summary of the 194-page report. "Yet the growing number of reports of public commitments to end FGM/C and its actual abandonment by communities across a diverse range of countries are strong indications that the practice can indeed become a vestige of the past."

UNICEF's latest report is its most comprehensive yet, drawing from nationally-representative surveys from 29 countries where FGM/C still persists. It also includes new data on girls under 15.

Here are a few highlights from the findings:

FGM/C is still nearly universal in Somalia (98% of girls and women affected), Guinea (96%), Djibouti (93%) and Egypt (91%)

Of the 29 countries where FGM/C persists, it is now least prevalent in Cameroon and Uganda. In both countries, only one per cent of girls and women have undergone the practice.

In half of the 29 countries with available data, most girls were cut before their 5th birthday

In Mauritania, girls are typically cut at just one month old

In Egypt, Kenya and the Sudan, FGM/C is mostly performed by medical professionals as opposed to traditional practitioners. (In Egypt, 77 per cent of affected girls were cut by a professional health-care provider).

In Liberia, the poorest girls and women are twice as likely to have undergone FGM/C than those from wealthy households

In Ethiopia, 41% of uneducated girls and women support FGM/C. Among those with secondary or higher education, only 5% support it.

In Kenya and Tanzania, the practice is on the decline, with women between 45 and 49 three times more likely to have been cut than girls between 15 and 19

In Djibouti, Eritrea, Niger, Senegal and Somalia, more than one in five girls have undergone the most radical form of the practice, known as infibulation, which involves cutting and sewing the genitals. In Somalia, 63% of affected girls had their genitals sewn closed.

In Eritrea, 60% of girls and women consider FGM/C to be a religious requirement

Nearly every girl and women in Benin (93%), Ghana (93%), Tanzania (92%) and Burkina Faso (90%) think FGM/C should end

In Chad, Guinea and Sierra Leone, substantially more men than women would like to see the practice of FGM/C eliminated

Jennifer Yang is the Star’s global health reporter.
She previously worked as a general assignment reporter and won a NNA in
2011 for her explanatory piece on the Chilean mining disaster. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

07/11/2013

It was an "emergency" request from the Ghanian government to their U.S. counterparts: Please send condoms.

Just three months after 126 million of the “Be-Safe” condoms were withdrawn from circulation in Ghana, the U.S. has responded to the African countyry's request and sent 20 million condoms worth $650,000, according to the government's ministry of health.

"It was the third time in five years that the United States had sent an emergency supply of condoms to avoid a national stock-out of high-quality affordable condoms," said a government news service report posted on the Ghana ministry of health website.

The reason for the April recall: according to an April report in The Guardian, Ghana faced a major health issue because condoms supplied to the country's health service were discovered with holes in them. The condoms also burst easily, were too small and were not adequately lubricated, according to the report.

The government said at the time that the faulty condoms had been traced back to the original manufacturer, Henan Xibei Latex Company Limited, in Henan province, central China.

"This is a huge, huge problem," Faustina Fynn-Nyame, director of Marie Stopes International in Ghana, told The Guardian. "There will be a lot of unintended pregnancies as a result of this, and that means maternal mortality and unsafe abortion. Commercial sex workers also use these products [so] the consequences could be enormous."

The Guardian report and condom recall also came only two months after Ghana was warned to lower its birth rate by an official with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

If she spoke Shona – the main
indigenous language in the southern African republic of Zimbabwe
– Mtetwa might be in worse trouble than she is.

As matter’s stand, the woman is in
trouble enough – no rare experience for her.

The leading human rights
lawyer in her adopted country, Mtetwa, 54, faces trial on a
charge of obstructing justice, the result of an incident that supposedly took
place this past March.

Here is what happened, according
to the police version.

It seems a squad of Zimbabwe’s
finest were conducting a search at the home of one Thabani Mpofu, a political
opponent of long-time Zimbabwean ruler Robert Mugabe. This was on March 17.

Alerted to the search, Mtetwa
hurried to the scene, at which point – say the police – she became rude and
abusive, even going as far as to refer to them in a loud voice as “imbwa dzaMugabe,” which is Shona for
“Mugabe’s dogs.”

It was around this point that the
police arrested Mtetwa and carted her off to jail, where she remained for eight
long days until, finally, she was released on March 25, after being charged
with an offence that could result in two years’ imprisonment if she’s
convicted.

“The police were out to get me,”
she said following her release. “They wanted me to feel their might and power
because I call myself a human rights lawyer.”

As you might expect, the
Zimbabwean constabulary take a different view.

“Her actions hindered the course
of our duties,” huffed chief police superintendent Luckson Mukazhi while
testifying at Mtetwa’s trial, which got underway last month. “We had to abandon
the whole process and return later to complete the searches.”

But here’s the thing – Mtetwa
doesn’t speak Shona. As a result, she could not have said what the police say that
she said.

Born and raised in Swaziland, Mtetwa moved to Zimbabwe in
1983, when she was 24 years old. Since then, she has used English to
communicate, both privately and as a lawyer, in a career that has brought her
great trouble, much physical suffering, and no little fame.

Owing to her courageous defence of
countless Zimbabwean political dissidents, she has been detained several times
by police and twice been severely beaten. More than a few of her clients –
white and black alike – credit her for saving their lives.

But back to the trial, which is
being conducted before Zimbabwean Magistrate Rumbidzai Mugwagwa.

Mtetwa has pleaded not guilty to
the charge against her. Although she has yet to testify in her defence, she insists
she did not interfere with police during their search of her client’s residence.
She merely asked to be shown a search warrant, which the police failed to
produce. She did not shout at them, she says.

The trial began on June 10,
proceeding with extreme sluggishness since then.

Meanwhile, the 89-year-old Mugabe
has scheduled presidential elections for July 31 in hopes of extending his
33-year hold on power in a country once celebrated as the economic and political
hope of the region. But Zimbabwe
has declined mightily on all fronts since Mugabe assumed office.

The country’s last presidential
vote took place in 2008, following a violent campaign that left some 200 dead
and thousands more either injured or displaced. Although he subsequently
entered a power-sharing agreement with the main opposition group, Mugabe has
continued to hound and intimidate his adversaries.

Mtetwa says her present legal
troubles are part of that same strategy. By dragging human rights lawyers into
court to face trials of their own, the octogenarian schemer known as Robert Gabriel
Mugabe effectively puts them out of commission.

“Basically, lawyers are being tied
up with trials in order to ensure that they don’t represent their clients and
they don’t concentrate on their work,” Mtetwa said in a recent radio interview.
“I just hope Zimbabwe
will have free, fair, and peaceful elections and that human rights defenders
will be able to do their bit without being harassed.”

In Zimbabwe – as Beatrice Mtetwa knows
better than anyone – those are two very tall orders.

Oakland Ross is a feature writer at the Toronto Star. He previously spent several
years as a newspaper correspondent based in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.

Known locally as "ingoma," the ritual is shrouded in secrecy and performed in the bush, where boys also undergo several survival tests. Common with ethnic Xhosas, Sothos and Ndebeles, the practice was once described by Nelson Mandela as a "kind of spiritual preparation for the trials of manhood."

Another 300 boys have also been recently hospitalized and the results of their botched circumcisions are horrific. Also speaking to The Times, Eastern Cape health department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said some of the badly-injured boys have lost the tips of their penises; others have genitals that are gangrenous, resemble "burnt-out sausages" or are missing altogether.

In May this year, South African president Jacob Zuma condemned the "massive and unnecessary loss of young life at the hands of those who are supposed to nurture and protect them."

“It cannot be acceptable that every time young men reach this crucial
time in their development, their lives are culled in the most painful of
ways, in the care of circumcision schools,” Zuma said in a statement.

Jennifer Yang is the Star’s global health reporter.
She previously worked as a general assignment reporter and won a NNA in
2011 for her explanatory piece on the Chilean mining disaster. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

07/04/2013

Robert Mugabe addresses a gathering of followers in 2011. Now 89, and after 33 years in power, the Zimbabwean leader is running for the presidency again. (Jekesai Njikizana/AFP/Getty Images)

When it was last featured on the front pages of newspapers around the world, the southern African republic of Zimbabwe was picking up the pieces following violent and probably dishonest elections that had somehow failed to oust its aged, authoritarian ruler from power.That was in 2008, when Robert Mugabe was a mere lad – just 84 years old.Now he’s 89, and he’s taunting his opponents again, as Zimbabwean voters prepare to trek to the polls for the umpteenth time since the former schoolteacher, turned guerrilla leader, turned political prisoner, first took up the reins of power in what had previously been a white-ruled pariah state called Rhodesia.He first became the country's ruler in 1980, exactly 33 years ago.“They are afraid of elections,” Mugabe crowed the other day, referring to his political adversaries, most of them members of a splintered outfit called the Movement for Democratic Change. “They know they are going to lose, and it’s a sure case they are going to lose.”Mugabe could well be right.After all, the wily octogenarian sprang the vote last month as a surprise, setting the date for July 31, thereby leaving the underfunded opposition with little time to prepare.Morgan Tsvangirai, 61 years old and leader of the main MDC faction, immediately demanded an extension of the campaign by at least two weeks, which would have shifted the vote to August 14.At first, it seemed he was in luck.Under pressure from his counterparts in neighbouring lands, Mugabe graciously acceded to Tsvangirai’s request, albeit with the proviso that the date change would first have to be okayed by the supreme court – purely a formality, of course.Several days later, the court dutifully announced its ruling, setting the vote for – wait for it – the very day originally envisioned by the president.Funny how that works.So July 31, it is.Considering the vertiginous decline of the Zimbabwean economy on Mugabe’s long and turbulent watch – not to mention his penchant for underhanded and often brutal political machinations – you’d think the near-nonagenarian’s electoral comeuppance would be a pretty sure thing.But that is exactly what people have thought in advance of previous Zimbabwean elections – and look who’s still in power.Granted, the vote in 2008 was something of a shocker for the perennial incumbent.It was the bloodiest contest to date – and the closest. By most objective assessments, Mugabe actually lost in the first round, at least if you went by the rules. But Mugabe knew better. He simply ignored the rules and held on to power, anyway.Up to a point.Under extreme international pressure, the two sides somehow managed to bicker and claw their way into a very uneasy accommodation – a coalition government that left Mugabe in the presidential palace, enjoying most of the power, not to mention the declared support of the army.Tsvangirai, a former trade unionist who has long served as Mugabe’s personal punching bag, became prime minister, and his top advisor, Tendai Biti, got the finance ministry.The result was not so much a government as a five-year experiment in dysfunction.Now it’s time for the voters to choose – or it will be if Mugabe forgoes the skullduggery and intimidation that have blotted previous campaigns in his beautiful but beleaguered land.July 31, it is.

Oakland Ross is a feature writer at the Toronto Star. He previously spent several
years as a newspaper correspondent based in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.

Meet the children of Bagega -- who have very good reason to look so happy these days.

A bit of background: in March 2010, a Médecins Sans Frontières team in Nigeria noticed that an alarming number of children were dying in the northern state of Zamfara. It turned out to be a lead poisoning outbreak -- reportedly the worst in recorded history -- and more than 400 children are estimated to have died as a result.

The Zamfara outbreak can be traced back to the 2009 economic recession, which triggered a gold rush as villagers suddenly realized they could get good prices for the gold they knew to be buried underfoot. Unfortunately, the rock in Zamfara is concentrated with lead -- and it was all being released into the environment by the fervent mining activity.

MSF immediately initiated an emergency response but also demanded that the Nigerian government decontaminate the villages through environmental remediation -- after all, it would be pointless to initiate expensive chelation treatments only to have the children be continually re-exposed.

Seven of the eight affected villages were remediated over the ensuing years. But as of late last year, the final and largest village -- called Bagega, with an estimated 1,500 children -- was still waiting for the Nigerian government to release the remediation funds promised by the president in May 2012.

In late January 2013, the government finally released about 850 million Nigerian naira and environmental clean-up activities in Bagega -- spearheaded by environmental engineering company TerraGraphics -- were finally able to begin.

And on Tuesday, the Nigeria-based Follow the Money non-profit initiative announced in a press release that remediation was on track to finish by Friday.

“The people of Bagega and Zamfara are entirely excited that the
remediation is complete after a very long time,” said Hamzat Lawal with Follow the Money and non-profit organization NYCAN in a phone interview from Nigeria.

He
stressed, however, that two things are now needed: 1) a sustainability
plan for safer mining practices, and 2) a strategy for transferring medical knowledge from MSF to local health workers, so that future outbreaks can be managed by Nigerians.

In the same press release, Michelle Chouinard, an MSF Nigeria staffer from New Brunswick, announced that 981 children in Bagega have been screened since April 22, with 941 on track for admission into the treatment program and another 181 already undergoing chelation therapy.

Yup. For the kids of Bagega, that's a pretty good reason to smile.

Jennifer Yang is the Star’s global health reporter.
She previously worked as a general assignment reporter and won a NNA in
2011 for her explanatory piece on the Chilean mining disaster. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

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